Simulating energy, water and CO2 fluxes at representative desert ecosystems over Central Asia

Abstract

Thesis investigates the growing season net ecosystem CO2 exchange to understand abiotic carbon contribution to the carbon process at two desert ecosystems with alkaline soils in Kazakhstan; determines the key ecological parameters of desert shrubs for the use in LSM; modifies the original root water uptake function (RWUF) with a linear function of soil water potential to one with an exponential function for improving the performances of CLM for both latent and sensible heat fluxes in a Central Asian desert ecosystem; compares the default RWUF with other three RWUFs and the effect of root distribution on the performance of CLM is also investigated; evaluates the performance of CLM in simulating water and carbon fluxes at two desert ecosystems in Kazakhstan.